Surely there must be a correlation between Western game development studios fixated on ESG policies and DEI initiatives and their continued financial failures and industry-wide layoffs.

NeverRealm Studios and Warner Brothers have announced plans to nickel and dime players of Mortal Kombat 1 over the next year with the Khaos Reigns expansion, which will include six additional characters.

Mortal Kombat 1 was announced in May 2023 to much fanfare. However, subsequent trailers leading up to the game’s release on September 19 told a different story. Serving as a second series reboot and the first release since 2019’s Mortal Kombat 11.

NeverRealm and Warner Brothers seemingly “revived” the franchise only to tarnish it with egregious woke themes and values. Their focus on “diverse and inclusive” character designs resulted in turning female characters into unattractive and androgynous figures.

Despite generating considerable hype during its initial announcement, Mortal Kombat 1 floundered upon release, selling around 3 million copies worldwide by the end of 2023.

This is a far cry from 2019’s Mortal Kombat 11, which managed to sell 15 million copies by October 2022. In comparison, Capcom’s similarly criticized release of Street Fighter 6 sold 3.3 million copies by May 2024, while TEKKEN 8 sold two million copies within its first month of release.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with Mortal Kombat 1 from a gameplay perspective. However, its progressive character designs, which focused on “desexualizing” female characters by altering their costumes, reducing breast size, and giving them unrecognizable masculine faces, led to the game selling far below expectations.

Despite the obvious boost from ESG hedge fund investments the game had generated for its ugliness, Mortal Kombat 1’s financial performance has done little to prevent disciplinary action against NeverRealm for their significant failure. As a result, the WB-owned studio has been hit with layoffs.

NetherRealm Studios Quality Assurance Analyst Tony Lazzara stated in a LinkedIn post that the entire mobile team at the studio has been laid off. Consequently, NetherRealm and Warner Bros. are terminating their free-to-play mobile game “Mortal Kombat: Onslaught” just one year after its release, as the entire development team has been let go.

As it turned out, nobody was particularly interested in playing a team-based RPG based on the altered, woke foundation of Mortal Kombat 1. Despite the game being removed from app stores, in-game purchases will continue until August 23, giving dedicated paypigs an extra chance to spend their hard-earned money on a game that will no longer be playable after October 21.

A total of around 50 employees have been laid off at NetherRealm following their failure to appeal to gamers, who are predominantly male and prefer attractive characters, as indicated by Capcom’s own “Super Election” survey. This brings the total number of layoffs in the gaming industry to well over 11,000 in 2024 alone.

A fate NetherRealm and Warner Bros. seemingly brought upon themselves by focusing their game direction on adhering to globalist policies on diversity, inclusivity, and ethnic representation.

These policies appear to aim at purging problematic themes from video games, such as attractive women, and replacing them with unattractive, masculine, and preferably homosexual alternatives to attract investments from hedge funds that support BlackRock’s ESG agenda.

For more information on the impact of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) policies on game development, look no further than WB’s own release of Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, developed by Rocksteady Studios, which ultimately resulted in a $200 million loss for the company.

To offset these losses, Warner Bros and NetherRealm are once again pushing consumers to spend exorbitant amounts on additional characters in their subpar progressive game. Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns, a new story DLC, will feature Liu Kang rallying his champions and trusting his enemies to face off against a new threat from an alternate timeline, Titan Havik.

Six new characters are also being added to the game, with three returning MK fighters launching alongside the new story content on September 24, and three guest fighters arriving at a later date. The three returning fighters available on September 24 will include Noob Saibot, Sektor, and Cyrax.

The guest fighters, Terminator T-1000, Ghostface from Scream, and Conan the Barbarian will be added at an unspecified later date.

Cyrax and Sektor, both cyborg ninjas, are already featured in Mortal Kombat 1 as Kameo Fighters. However, the new iterations are gender-swapped versions of these characters, likely a move to increase the game’s diversity quota by turning these long-standing characters into “women.”

Notably, Sektor will be voiced by Erika Ishii, a genderfluid pansexual who will also voice the character of Rook in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

In essence, you’ll be required to spend $50 on the Khaos Reigns Expansion, a story DLC for a game widely criticized for its ugly and woke female character designs.

This DLC costs as much as a full game on its own and offers no original characters, featuring instead three commercial tie-ins (including Conan, who would be a notable addition to a fighting game) and two returning characters whose cyborg ninja identities are being reimagined as female for diversity reasons.

To experience the full content, you’ll need to shell out an additional $30 for the first Kombat Pack, which includes more intriguing characters like Homelander from The Boys, Omni-Man, DC’s Peacemaker, alongside Quan Chi, Ermac, Takahashi Takeda, and five additional Kameo fighters.

The second year of DLC content for this underwhelming title is, as expected, underwhelming. While Mortal Kombat 1 does a better job at adding content compared to Capcom’s Street Fighter 6, which also features unattractive and censored female character designs it remains equally overpriced and mundane.

The story DLC might appeal to dedicated fans of Mortal Kombat 1, but at $50, it’s hard to justify the cost, especially when the commercial tie-ins largely don’t fit the fighting game’s grim theme or are gender-swapped alternatives meant to boost the game’s already criticized female representation.